Articles - Reverb Machinehttps://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/Fri, 11 Aug 2017 14:48:48 +0000en-GBSite-Server v6.0.0-11659-11659 (http://www.squarespace.com)Synth and music production tutorialsToro y Moi - Girl Like You SynthSynthsreverbmachineMon, 14 Aug 2017 20:18:06 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/toro-y-moi-synth597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:5991f6b317bffca6c99ea602The latest Toro y Moi album Boo Boo features a plethora of 80s synthpop /
alt-R&B textures and beats, sounding simultaneously nostalgic and
modern. Most of the 80s vibes on the album come courtesy of a Yamaha DX7, a
digital hardware synth released in 1983 that utilises a difficult to
program synthesis technique called frequency modulation (FM) synthesis.
Many of the DX7's preset sounds are classics and can be heard on countless
80s pop records. Although subjectively cheesy sounding, DX7 sounds are a
great way to add an authentic 80s vibe to your own music.

The latest Toro y Moi album Boo Boo features a plethora of 80s synthpop / alt-R&B textures and beats, sounding simultaneously nostalgic and modern. Most of the 80s vibes on the album come courtesy of a Yamaha DX7, a digital hardware synth released in 1983 that utilises a difficult to program synthesis technique called frequency modulation (FM) synthesis. Many of the DX7's preset sounds are classics and can be heard on countless 80s pop records. Although subjectively cheesy sounding, DX7 sounds are a great way to add an authentic 80s vibe to your own music. DX7s can be picked up from eBay inexpensively, and there are also plenty of alternatives like the portable Korg Volca FM, the software Native Instruments FM8 or the free Dexed.

Also, I recently got this Yamaha DX7s synth. It's awesome. I'm using that on everything right now.

DX7 Pad

My personal favourite synth sound from Boo Boo is the swirling pad patch on the tracks Girl Like You, You & I and Don't Try. The key elements to the sound are thick, chorused oscillators and an envelope controlled filter with a slow attack. FM synthesis allows you to create some really complex sounds, including hollow, glassy sounds, as heard in Girl Like You and You & I. DX7 programming is a lot more complex than programming traditional synths, instead involving ‘modulator’ oscillators and ‘carrier’ oscillators. Attack Magazine have a great Introduction to FM Synthesis tutorial that's worth checking out to learn more:

Virtual analogue synths start with oscillators generating harmonically rich waveforms such as square or sawtooth waves, and sculpt away frequencies with filters. FM synths work in reverse: their oscillators (usually known as operators) are usually sinusoidal to begin with, and their pitch can be modulated incredibly precisely by other operators. Unlike an LFO, an operator’s pitch is in the audio range, which means rather than a wobbly vibrato effect, this pitch modulation results in the addition of extra harmonics.

You don't need to be an expert in sound design to get stuck into FM synths, you can get started by exploring presets and try editing the ones you like to alter the sound. I've created the Swirling DX sound in Native Instruments FM8 for you to download below.

Download

Thanks for reading, this has been a short excerpt from an upcoming article for Samplified. The full article explores even more patches including DX7 basses, as well as some of Toro y Moi's musical ideas. Check the link below to download the Native Instruments FM8 patch.

This is the first part of Stranger Synths, a series on the synthesizers used in Stranger Things.

I'm going to start the series off by looking at the song that plays during fake Will's funeral, Elegia by New Order. A dark instrumental featuring eerie sounding synths and guitars, the song was written in memory of Ian Curtis, lead singer of the band's former incarnation, Joy Division. The song was originally recorded in 1985 for the album Low-Life, and a 17 minute version was also released in 2002. Although not part of the original soundtrack composed by Michael Stein and Kyle Dixon from Survive, the lush and eerie synths of Elegia sound right at home in Stranger Things. Many people will also know the song from the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain trailer; here's my remake using some of the synths I'll cover:

E-mu Emulator

Both the harpsichord and eerie voice-synth on Elegia are from the E-mu Emulator, a range of digital sampling keyboards from the early 80s. They used floppy disks to store samples and boasted analogue filters and output stages to warm up the lo-fi samples. The Emulator was used by a lot of 80s synth artists, you can hear it all over Tears for Fears Songs From The Big Chair, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's Junk Culture, several John Carpenter soundtracks, and was even used by Ferris Bueller in Ferris Bueller's Day Off to play samples of himself coughing and sneezing to feign illness on the phone. The Emulator was functionally similar to the Fairlight CMI and both synths share several of the same sounds.

Using Samplers

As the Emu Emulator was a sampling keyboard that used floppy disk-based samples, using samplers is a great way to get some classic 80s Emulator sounds in our own productions. There are a few sample libraries available, such as those by UVI and Rhythmic Robot. Listen to the parts played on Rhythmic Robot's Universe of Sounds Vol 2 using the patches Harpsichord Grand and Vox Oo Ooh.

The Emulator featured a full control panel to shape the sound beyond the basic samples, it was these controls coupled with the analogue filter and output section that made the original unit so popular for it's sound. We can process our own Emulator samples further to improve on the initial sound, most beneficial I found was using compression as well as Native Instruments Transient Master to increase the sustain and fatten the sound. I used aggressive EQing to boost the treble frequencies and brighten the sound and then delay & reverb to create a big spacious sound.

New Synths

If you're worried that the sampled Emulator instruments lack the analogue magic of the original Emulator, or if you just don't want to pay for the sample libraries, then you can create sounds with a similar vibe to the Emulator patches in other synthesizers. I'll show you how to create the Harpsichord in TAL U-NO-LX, a Roland Juno plugin and the vocal sound in Arturia Prophet V, a Sequential Prophet VS plugin.

Harpsichord synth sounds are relatively simple to create, the most important element is setting the amp envelope with a short decay and no sustain to create a plucked timbre. A Juno-style synth is great for this as the onboard chorus really makes the patch sound sparkle. From the default patch lower the Sub Oscillator to halfway and set both the HPF and LPF filters to halfway, then set the Resonance in the Filter section to around 6. Set the ADSR Envelope with no Sustain and the Decay/Release both around 5, then turn on Chorus effect and that's it! Process with some nice delay and reverb and if you want to explore this sound further then experiment with using the Pulse wave instead of the Saw wave.

To create the vocal sound I'll use a wavetable synth with a vocal wavetable as the main oscillator. Arturia Prophet V is perfect for this as it has vocal wavetables, and the vector synthesis aspect can be used to easily blend this with other wavetables to create some interesting sounds. Start with the template ProVS 1 Osc Structure and change Oscillator A to 076: vocal2. If you want to make the sound interesting you can change Oscillator B to different wavetable and blend it in a little to make it more interesting, 124: piano2 works well for this. After this lower the ENV AMT and CUTOFF to make the sound a little darker and more analogue-esque. Adjust the amp envelope so that the notes don't bleed into each other too much by decreasing stage 3's level.

Low-End

The other prominent synth on Elegia is of course the growling bass that grows and recedes throughout the track. There's plenty of synths that can pull off this sound but the real champions of this sound are Moogs; it's possible that the Elegia bass is the Moog Source that the band owned and had already used on Blue Monday. Although it looks radically different, the Moog Source's sound is similar to a Minimoog so we can use most Moog synths or plugins to get a close sound. I'm going to use Arturia Mini V, but there are plenty of free Minimoog emulations too.

The aim of this sound is to get a huge rich sound with the filter wide open, and then automate the cutoff frequency knob throughout the song to control the strength of the bass sound. I've gone for over the top-huge with all 3 oscillators on and set to Sawtooth with volumes up to full, and the External Input Volume switched on and turned up to 6. This feeds the sound back into the synth, effectively acting as an overdrive. I've set the Filter Emphasis (resonance) to 9 0'clock and after that adjust the Cutoff Frequency manually throughout the song. After the Moog I've ran the sound through Soundtoys Decapitator to add even more drive and then some really light plate reverb to make it sound just a little less dry.

Download

Thanks for reading and be sure to check back soon for more Stranger Things synths! Click the link below to download the patches for Arturia Mini, Prophet and TAL U-NO-LX.

]]>Stranger Synths | New Order - ElegiaLucy in the Sky With Diamonds KeysreverbmachineMon, 07 Aug 2017 17:26:59 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:5984652ee6f2e181003c8cebAllegedly influenced by John Lennon's experimentation with LSD, Lucy in the
Sky With Diamonds was originally released on the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It features two distinct musical parts:
dreamlike verses in 3/4, and a straightahead rock chorus in 4/4. The song
opens with an immediately recognisably arpeggio melody that sound somewhere
between a harpsichord and a plucked guitar; I'll show you how create this
sound using plugins and effects.

Allegedly influenced by John Lennon's experimentation with LSD, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds was originally released on the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It features two distinct musical parts: dreamlike verses in 3/4, and a straightahead rock chorus in 4/4. The song opens with an immediately recognisably arpeggio melody that sound somewhere between a harpsichord and a plucked guitar; I'll show you how create this sound using plugins and effects.

The original part was recorded by Paul McCartney on a Lowrey DSO Heritage electronic organ. Like most electric organ's of its type, the Lowrey organ's sound is controlled by pressing stops to select certain instrument timbres; the Lucy in the Sky sound is likely a combination of the harpsichord, vibraharp, guitar and music box stops. Musically the part consists of an A Major arpeggio over a moving chromatic bass with notes E - G - F# -F, this is a classic John Lennon writing technique reminiscent of Dear Prudence.

Yamaha PS-20

Unfortunately I don't own a Lowrey Organ, nor do I have the space to buy one. Somewhat close is my Yamaha PS-20 electronic organ that has a nice lo-fi sounding Harpsichord preset, a lot of preset-based keyboards will have a harpsichord or plucked guitar sound that has a Lucy in the Sky vibe; the cheaper the keyboard the better. Listen to the Yamaha PS-20 sound, it has a similar vibe.

Arturia Prophet V

To get even closer to the sound I decided to explore Arturia Prophet V, in particular for the emulation of the Sequential Prophet VS, a powerful digital synth that features a joystick for sound control and Vector Synthesis as an at-the-time new sound creation technique. A similar Vector Synthesis synth is the Korg Wavestation. The Prophet VS uses wavetable oscillators as it's sound sources, and these can be used to produce complex string sounds like the Lucy in the Sky arpeggios.

Make sure you're using Arturia Prophet V in the VS mode, it's always easy to start programming from an initialized patch and the preset "Templates - ProVS 4 Osc" is a suitable starting point. Start by setting the wavetable sound sources to some complex sounds, I found the pictured 4 wavetables to be a good combination. Once these are set you can move the joystick on the left of the control panel to produce different mixes of the 4 sound sources, this is a cool way to come up with some interesting, complex sounds.

We also need to adjust the amp envelope to produce a plucked sound similar to a guitar or harpsichord. The Prophet VS has a really powerful envelope section, however we only need a simple envelope with a quick decay, low sustain and a small amount of both attack and release; the envelope settings below create a good timed pluck. It's a really bright sound so we don't need to adjust the filter section at all.

We can optionally shape the sound further to make it sound more authentic, we want to make it sound less digital and give it more analogue flavour. To do this we can add some tape-style vibrato, lower the frequency range, and then run it through some vintage plate reverb.

Tape Vibes

There is some strong vibrato on the Lucy in the Sky recording, this was either a characteristic of the Lowrey keyboard, or it was imparted when it was recorded to tape. I'm just going to use EchoBoy set to the 'Cheap Tape' style and edit the Wobble settings under Style Edit. If you wish to explore this technique further then I covered tape vibrato plugins more extensively in my first Mac DeMarco tutorial. For the vibrato settings you'll want a fast, shallow vibrato, so set the LFO to a sine wave, Depth to 12 o'clock and Rate to 3 o'clock. EchoBoy is primarily a delay effect plugin, so to make it act as a tape emulator set the Mix to 100% wet and Time and Feedback to 0.

To make it sound even more like it was recorded to tape we can lower the bandwidth by cutting some of the bass and treble frequencies. There's a few ways we can do this with a dedicated tape simulator or using simple EQ cuts. A great tape emulation plugin is Nomad Factory Magnetic II, it's easy to use and sounds great. The Reel Speed knob controls the speed of the virtual tape machine; higher speeds give you more studio-quality fidelity whereas lower speeds sound more lo-fi. For the Lucy sound I got great results lowering the Tape Speed setting to 3/¾ and cutting the bass whilst boosting the treble knob. To get a similar effect using just EQ, simply use low-pass and high-pass filters to subtly narrow the bandwidth.

For reverb all we need is a nice subtle plate reverb or spring reverb sound, the song was recorded in 1967 so avoid huge digital hall reverbs, unless that's the effect you're after. I chosen the apt Waves Abbey Road Plate Reverbs plugin; I used the preset Acoustic Guitar 1and set the Mix to a subtle 22%.

Download

Thanks for reading, if you manage to create the patch in another synth then let me know in the comments below! You can find a download link with the Arturia Prophet V patch and the Ableton Project file with the MIDI file and recordings. Try using the patch in your own songs to create a 60s psychedelic vibe in your own music and have fun with it!

]]>Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds KeysIn The Style Of: Flume Sound DesignGuest ArticleSynthsreverbmachineTue, 11 Jul 2017 18:09:33 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/in-the-style-of-flume-sound-design597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e9343d44194808550b1d6I recently wrote a guest article for Samplified about Flume's sound design
and music style. Read an excerpt of the article below, and check out the
whole article here.
Chopped Vocals
One of the most distinctive elements of Flume's sound is chopped up sounds,
especially vocals. You could either record your own vocals, find a guest
vocalist, or search through sample packs for good vocal samples. Flume uses
sample packs a fair bit and says he's picky about choosing samples for his
productions.

I recently wrote a guest article for Samplified about Flume's sound design and music style. Read an excerpt of the article below, and check out the whole article here.

Chopped Vocals

One of the most distinctive elements of Flume's sound is chopped up sounds, especially vocals. You could either record your own vocals, find a guest vocalist, or search through sample packs for good vocal samples. Flume uses sample packs a fair bit and says he's picky about choosing samples for his productions:

Also, I download a lot of sample packs. So I go through thousands and thousands of kick drums and snare drums to find the right sound. I’m very particular about my sounds. They all have to be unique. I don’t want to use standard sounds, I want to find weird ones.

- Flume

I'm using a sample from Samplephonics "Kruisemode: Liquid RnB" that was used by Flume in the song Numb & Getting Colder from Skin. Here's the sample over my track with no cuts, I've repitched it to fit the key of my song, in this case 2 semitones down to C Major. It sounds good but it doesn't flow with my track particularly well, especially towards the end of the sample.

To get the sample to fit with your track better, use your DAW's tools to cut, paste, duplicate and move the sound around the beat and add rhythm to it. Reversing portions of the sample is also a great way to get a slightly surreal effect. To explore this technique even further research repitching your samples and applying them to a keyboard to use pitchbend and portamento. Listen to my chopped up version, I'm a big fan of duplicating small sections to get a stuttering effect.

Make sure to root through some sample packs to find your own interesting samples, they don't necessarily have to be similar to the one that I used, it's how you use the sample that will define your sound.

Remember to check out the full article, with synth patches, production tips and a free Ableton Live project file here.

]]>In The Style Of: Flume Sound DesignBeach House Keyboard SoundsSynthsreverbmachineSun, 09 Jul 2017 20:57:44 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/beach-house-keyboard-sounds597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e9341d44194808550b1aaBeach House are a quintessential dream-pop band, they hail from Baltimore
and a big part of their sound is their layering of keyboards, mostly
vintage organs and string synths. The duo don't seem too fussy about the
gear they use, instead relying on old, cheap organs for their beats. A
Pitchfork article described their practice space: "Old tour set pieces and
at least 20 vintage organs—they call them “grandma organs”—line one half of
the large room." They don't talk about gear much in interviews and there
are no pictures of the band recording, so it's tough to figure out exactly
which keyboards these "grandma organs" are. Although organs are a big part
of the Beach House sound, another huge factor that I won't cover as much is
their muted drum beats and guitarist Alex Scally's work, which is mostly a
clean Fender Strat played with a slide through a lot of reverb. Instead
I'll focus on their synth heavy songs to work out what makes that element
of their sound so unique.

Beach House are a quintessential dream-pop band, they hail from Baltimore and a big part of their sound is their layering of keyboards, mostly vintage organs and string synths. The duo don't seem too fussy about the gear they use, instead relying on old, cheap organs for their beats. A Pitchfork article described their practice space: "Old tour set pieces and at least 20 vintage organs—they call them “grandma organs”—line one half of the large room." They don't talk about gear much in interviews and there are no pictures of the band recording, so it's tough to figure out exactly which keyboards these "grandma organs" are. Although organs are a big part of the Beach House sound, another huge factor that I won't cover as much is their muted drum beats and guitarist Alex Scally's work, which is mostly a clean Fender Strat played with a slide through a lot of reverb. Instead I'll focus on their synth heavy songs to work out what makes that element of their sound so unique.

"We use a four-track for our beats, and a collection of organs we have acquired from various whereabouts. Alex plays a Stratocaster, and I have an old Yamaha keyboard that’s the same age as me."

- The Worlds In Our Heads, An Interview With Beach House

String Machines & Electric Organs

The two main types of keyboards favoured by Victoria Legrand are string machines and electric organs. String machines generally refer to inexpensive keyboards that were an attempt to produce cheap orchestral sounds by using slight delay to create the illusion of multiple sound sources. Although these keyboards failed to truly capture any orchestral accuracy, their lush, warm sound has a distinct character of it's own. To learn more, check out this Brief History by Reverb.com.

Although electric organs can refer to a huge number of instruments, in this context I'm referring to cheaper portable keyboards from the 80s. They're faker sounding than the Hammond organs popular in the 70s and despite the obvious differences in sound, the internal guts of string machines and organs are relatively similar; both sound like cheap yet charming imitations of their real counterparts.

The Yamaha PS-20 is an important part of the Beach House sound, it was even their main touring keyboard (up until 2015), and they would run it through a Line 6 Echo Park delay and Boss Reverb pedal. It has 10 different sounds and a sustain button that gives each note a long release time, perfect for flowing arpeggios.

NC:I read that you guys have a practice space, do you store a lot of vintage gear there?

AS: I wouldn’t call it vintage, it’s just kind of crap gear. All of our stuff combined, if it was burned for insurance money or something, would probably be enough to buy one Fender Rhodes. It literally is just crap we got from thrift stores. All of those old keyboards are mostly from the '70s, '80s, and '90s, and there is always one amazing thing on each of them. That’s this personal opinion I have. Every keyboard has one thing on it that is really amazing and completely unique. Even if about 95 percent of the sounds and presets are completely unusable or uncreative, there’s at least one amazing thing.

Chariot

Chariot was the first song released from new compilation album B-Sides and Rarities, and was recorded in 2015 for the albums Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars. It features a lush chord progression likely recorded from the Yamaha PS-20's Organ 2 sound. The chords are Bb | Eb| F7 | Cm and there is some use of layering to thicken up the sound. Listen below to my PS-20 on it's own, with reverb and delay, and then layered with another synth for thickness and low-end. The layered synth is a string machine plugin from GForce, which I'll go into next.

Space Song

Space Song is another Beach House tune that uses the PS-20 Organ 2 sound, this time with more layered strings that could've been recorded from any of the obscure thrift store keyboards that Beach House own. GForce Virtual String Machine is full of samples of old string machine keyboards, and it's super easy to use, you can just go through the presets until you find a patch that sounds good. I ended up using Violin Spreader from the Arp Omni and layered that on top of my PS-20 track. I ran both tracks through reverb and delay and added a slowly opening filter to the organ track, just like in the original song.

As you can see, the PS-20 is quite a big part of the Beach House sound. I picked up mine from eBay for about £30, but if you don't have the space to start collecting vintage keyboards then you can use plugins to get similar tones. A good place to start is Arturia Farfisa V or Vox Continental V, both based on legendary combo organs. Here's a quick patch I came up with in Vox Continental V that has a similar vibe to the PS-20 organ, check the bottom of the article to download it!

Lazuli

From 2012's Bloom, Lazuli features an 8-bit sounding synth arpeggio and more lush strings. The arpeggios could have been created with any synth, and I don't want to try to guess which one was used for the recording. You can get the same sound using any synth that features PWM waveforms, I'm using Arturia Prophet-V with the Square waveform and PWM up to 0.75 to get the 8-bit sound. Add some white noise in the Mixer section, turn off keyboard tracking (KBD) in the Filter section and set the ADSR to no sustain and raise the decay / release to just over halfway to get the percussive effect. After that add some reverb, compression and drive to complete the sound. I ran the compression after the reverb to get the reverb tails squished along with the original sound. Listen to the arps with and without effects:

The lush strings that come in after the arps are another great example of Beach House's use of string machines to create a lush, dreamy vibe. I'm using GForce VSM again with the Polymoog samples this time.

Walk In The Park

Again this song features the Yamaha PS-20 Organ 2 sound, this time in more of a percussive setting. It's a great part with sustained chords played by the left hand and chord stabs played with the right. The sustain mode makes this really easy and playing the PS-20 through reverb and delay makes it sound really big.

LIf you listen to the original song on good headphones you can hear some layering, there are two slightly different organ sounds in the left and right channels, the one in the right is mellower and slightly treblier. I imagine this is a case of Victoria recording her part on multiple organs and working out which ones layer together well. Here the PS-20 part here:

Wishes

Wishes is my personal favourite Beach House song and I had a lot of fun trying to figure it out. The process was similar to that of Space Song, I'm using the PS-20's Harpsichord sound, the Arp Omni patch from VSM and a lo-fi drum beat I quickly put together. The sustain function of the PS-20 makes arpeggio patterns like this really easy to play and the Harpsichord patch sounds nice and bright.

For the drum beat I auditioned a lot of samples from different drum machines and picked the ones that sounded most like the drums in Wishes. I detuned my snare sample and used some vinyl hi-hats. I then ran the whole kit through a Plate setting in Valhalla VintageVerb (the patch is Fat Drums with the mix all the way up to 30%) to make it sound distant but not drowned out in reverb.

To get a similar sounding patch to the PS-20 Harpsichord using software plugins, use just a Sawtooth wave, lower the filter frequency a little and set the envelope with a short attack and long release. I used TAL U-NO-LX, partially because it's one of my go-to synths, and the patch I came up with sounds reasonably close.

Also, if you haven't already then check out the fantastic Wishes music video, which was directed by Eric Wareheim from Tim and Eric.

Download

Thanks for reading! This article took a while to write but I learnt a lot from writing it, if anyone has any more information on Beach House's keyboards then please let me know! Make sure to download the patches and have fun making your own music with them.

]]>Beach House Keyboard SoundsPond – Paint Me Silver SynthSynthsreverbmachineThu, 06 Jul 2017 22:22:45 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/pond-paint-me-silver-synths597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e933bd44194808550b167Pond recently released their seventh studio album The Weather and it's
fantastic, after my Sweep Me Off My Feet tutorial I've had a couple of
requests for the synths in 'Paint Me Silver'. What a lot of people don't
know is that the main hook is based on a Todd Rundgren & Utopia song called
Cosmic Convoy. Although 'Paint Me Silver' starts out with a direct sample
from 'Cosmic Convoy', the main hook is based on the lead lick later in the
song overdubbed by the Pond members. I was lucky enough to see Pond on
their recent tour and their live synth setup consisted of a Moog Sub
Phatty, a Korg Poly-800 and a Dave Smith Prophet 08. They mostly used the
Moog for basses and the Korg for chorused pad chords, and for 'Paint Me
Silver' they used guitar for the lead, so it's hard to tell what was used
for the studio recording. I played with some differents synths and decided
that the lead synth is either the Korg Poly-800 or a Roland Juno-106, which
they also use regularly.

Pond recently released their seventh studio album The Weather and it's fantastic, after my Sweep Me Off My Feet tutorial I've had a couple of requests for the synths in 'Paint Me Silver'. What a lot of people don't know is that the main hook is based on a Todd Rundgren & Utopia song called Cosmic Convoy. Although 'Paint Me Silver' starts out with a direct sample from 'Cosmic Convoy', the main hook is based on the lead lick later in the song overdubbed by the Pond members. I was lucky enough to see Pond on their recent tour and their live synth setup consisted of a Moog Sub Phatty, a Korg Poly-800 and a Dave Smith Prophet 08. They mostly used the Moog for basses and the Korg for chorused pad chords, and for 'Paint Me Silver' they used guitar for the lead, so it's hard to tell what was used for the studio recording. I played with some differents synths and decided that the lead synth is either the Korg Poly-800 or a Roland Juno-106, which they also use regularly.

Sampling

Tell me about your new album… There’s this new song you played that has a repeating riff, I loved that. It was sort of hip-hop-y.

Jay: That song is a sample of a Todd Rundgren song, really slowed down, sort of like G-Funk and hip-hop.

Nick: Not so much the G-Funk, but more flamboyant southern sort of stuff, like Kanye flamboyant.

To get an idea of where 'Paint Me Silver' started I'll try playing around with the 'Cosmic Convoy' sample a little. Here's the original sample from around 1:05 in the song:

To get from 'Cosmic Convoy' to 'Paint Me Silver' we need to lower both the tempo and the pitch, and we can lower both at the same time with Repitch sampling. Put your sampler into Repitch mode and lower the tempo from 133bpm to 88.8bpm and the pitch will drop at the same rate as the tempo. This gives an immediate vaporwave vibe:

Lead Synth

As mentioned previously the lead synth line was likely created with either a Roland Juno-106 or a Korg Poly-800. It's a simple sawtooth patch with some thick chorus and pitchbending for the melody. I'm using a TAL U-NO-LX patch with just a sawtooth wave and the Low-Pass Filter pulled down a little. I've got Chorus I on and the pitchbend range set to 2 semitones. To make the lead sound a little less sterile, add some LFO vibrato to the DCO and keep the amount small, the rate fast and delay the vibrato a little to keep the initial sound in tune.

As with a lot of music of this type, the effects play a huge part in shaping the sound. After TAL U-NO-LX I'm running the sound into a delay, compression, saturation and reverb. The compression after delay is the most important element as it creates a smearing effect across the notes, I'm specifically using an analog style delay and compressor to keep the effects element dark and driven.

Swirling Chords

The pad chords in Paint Me Silver are again from the Juno-106, making use of the Juno's built in chorus effect and some additional phaser effects to get a swirling effect. I'm using TAL U-NO-LX again and I'm using the ADSR envelope to slowly open the Filter. To do this, take the cutoff frequency almost all the way down, raise the ENV amount to halfway and set the ADSR with a long, slow attack. Set Chorus I on and change the VCA mode from GATE to ENV so that the volume rises along with the filter frequency. For a Phaser I'm using my trusty EHX Small Stone Phaser pedal on low colour mode. For software options, every guitar amp sim seems to have a Small Stone emulation built in.

The Full Beat

I've covered the two main synth patches used in the song, some additional tracks are some guitar layering, bass guitar and processed drums. To get the sample to sit better in the mix I've EQed it to make it brighter and add more treble to it. I've then added some bass guitar and sampled drums from Superior Drummer, listen to the different mixes below:

Download

Thanks for reading, hopefully the section about sampling has given you some insight into the process behind this kind of songwriting, check out the TAL U-NO-LX patches below and use them in your own songs.

]]>Pond – Paint Me Silver SynthTycho – Division Synth SoundSynthsreverbmachineWed, 14 Jun 2017 16:11:55 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/tycho-division-synth-sound597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e9336d44194808550b107Division was the first song to be released off the 2016 album Epoch.
Featuring grinding guitars and post-rock-esque breaks, it has been the set
closer for most of Tycho's Epoch tour shows. I'll demonstrate how to create
a synth lead like the one used throughout the song on a Korg Minilogue,
Native Instruments Monark, and in the free TAL-NoiseMaker, although any
synth with 2 oscillators will be able to play this sound. Listen to the
song below, the synth lead appears at 0:47

Division was the first song to be released off the 2016 album Epoch. Featuring grinding guitars and post-rock-esque breaks, it has been the set closer for most of Tycho's Epoch tour shows. I'll demonstrate how to create a synth lead like the one used throughout the song on a Korg Minilogue, Native Instruments Monark, and in the free TAL-NoiseMaker, although any synth with 2 oscillators will be able to play this sound. Listen to the song below, the synth lead appears at 0:47:

Time Division

An interesting thing about this song is the time signature, which is the odd meter of 7/8. This is referenced in the title Division, as in beat division. Each bar contains 3 1/2 beats, or 7 quavers, counted as 1 & 2 & 3 & a 1 & 2 & 3 & a. Check out the music below for the notes and rhythm of the main riff.

Korg Minilogue

Also released in 2016, the Korg Minilogue is used heavily on Epoch. It's a pretty simple four-voice polyphonic synth with different voice modes and some cool modulation tricks. Commenting on his photo on Instagram, Scott said the Minilogue is "all over Epoch". He uses the Minilogue live and when I saw Tycho play recently he used it for the lead synth lines on Division, so I'm going to assume it was used on the album version of Division.

The basic patch we're going to create uses a few key elements, namely two triangle waves pitched an octave apart, and an envelope controlled filter with a long decay. This is easy to set up on the Minilogue's interface; firstly put the Minilogue into the MONO voice mode, making it act as a mono synth. Set both VCO 1 and VCO 2 to triangle and set one Oscillator an octave higher than the other. Also maker sure both Oscillators are set to the same level in the Mixer section, to get a good blend.

Moving to the filter and envelope sections, set the Cutoff to just below halfway and raise the EG AMT (envelope amount) to around the 2 o'clock mark. Make sure keytracking is off and set the filter to the gentler sounding 2-pole position. The AMG EG (amp envelope) wants to be set with full sustain and a a fair bit of release, and the Filter EG below it wants to have a low sustain and long decay. From here go to the delay section and add some nice filtered delay to make the sound a little less dry.

I've then run the Minilogue into SoundToys Decapitator for some saturation and Valhalla VintageVerb for a big reverb sound. You can hear the patch with and without effects:

Native Instruments Monark

As the core synth sound is so simple, just two triangle waves, we can program it in many software synths. One of my favourites that I used in my 'Awake' tutorial is Native Instruments Monark, an emulation of the legendary Minimoog synthesizer.. Monark is a powerful, great sounding synth, and is an ideal candidate for recreating the 'Division' lead. It is also favoured by Tycho's Scott Hansen, who has used it for live shows.

Set both Oscillator 1 and Oscillator 2 to triangle waves, then set the Range knobs to 8' and 4'. From here go the filter section and lower the filter cutoff to a little above 0, and raise the resonance a little. We'll use the filter envelope to add a little movement to the sound, so raise the Contour knob to over halfway and set envelope with a long decay (around the 5 mark) and low sustain. Try tweaking the filter section as it has a big effect on the sound, check the screenshot below for the exact settings that I found sounded best.

TAL-NoiseMaker

For those of you who don't have a Minilogue sitting around, or a big plugin collection yet, a great free synth to use is TAL-NoiseMaker. Billed as an improved version of their earlier TAL-Elek7ro-II soft-synth, NoiseMaker is a powerful software synth with an easy-to-grasp layout and some nice built-in effects, including chorus and reverb. It's a great synth to learn beginner synthesis on and a suitable synth for many sounds.

Set OSC 1 to Pulse and OSC 2 to Triangle (no triangle waveform for OSC1 but Pulse wave sounds closest), then make sure OSC 1 Tune is set to 0 and OSC 2 Tune is set to 12 (an octave up). In the Master section set OSC 1 and OSC 2 to max and turn the SUB oscillator all the way down. From here click Synth 2 to open up the filter / envelope section and set Cutoff and Reso to about the 9 o'clock mark. Set Cont (control) to around 3 o'clock and set the envelope with a long decay and release and a low sustain. Add some release to the main ADSR, then add some reverb from the built-in effects section, found under Control.

]]>Tycho – Division Synth SoundMac DeMarco Synths Pt.2SynthsreverbmachineMon, 05 Jun 2017 23:10:58 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/mac-demarco-synths-pt-2597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e9331d44194808550b0c6Welcome to another synth tutorial for Mac DeMarco synths, if you haven't
already then check out part one, a tutorial on the synths in 'Chamber of
Reflection'. In that article I looked at a Roland Juno sound and an organ
sound and processed them with some tape emulation plugins to create Mac's
signature woozy sound. In this article I'll look at a couple more Mac songs
and try to copy the patches within my DAW. Mac's new album This Old Dog is
his most synth-heavy album yet, with dreamy sounding synths sitting
alongside his classic chorused guitar playing. I'll also look at a song
from his mini-album Another One that came out in 2015. Mac's favourite
synths, judging by the sounds the appear on his albums, videos of his live
performances, and pictures of his home studio, are the Roland Juno-60 and
Yamaha DX7. Both synths are timeless classics with unmatchable sound,
however both have a wealth of imitators and emulations that can be found
inexpensively. Throughout the article I'm going to use TAL U-NO-LX for the
Juno sounds and Native Instruments FM8 for the DX7 sounds; for free options
check out TAL U-NO-62 and Dexed.

Welcome to another synth tutorial for Mac DeMarco synths, if you haven't already then check out part one, a tutorial on the synths in 'Chamber of Reflection'. In that article I looked at a Roland Juno sound and an organ sound and processed them with some tape emulation plugins to create Mac's signature woozy sound. In this article I'll look at a couple more Mac songs and try to copy the patches within my DAW. Mac's new album This Old Dog is his most synth-heavy album yet, with dreamy sounding synths sitting alongside his classic chorused guitar playing. I'll also look at a song from his mini-album Another One that came out in 2015.
Mac's favourite synths, judging by the sounds the appear on his albums, videos of his live performances, and pictures of his home studio, are the Roland Juno-60 and Yamaha DX7. Both synths are timeless classics with unmatchable sound, however both have a wealth of imitators and emulations that can be found inexpensively. Throughout the article I'm going to use TAL U-NO-LX for the Juno sounds and Native Instruments FM8 for the DX7 sounds; for free options check out TAL U-NO-62 and Dexed.

On The Level

Sounding similar to 'Chamber of Reflection', 'On The Level' features more dreamy sounding Juno lines over some suitably 80s sounding pad chords. The synth chords have a definite FM-ness about them, and were likely recorded from Mac's Yamaha DX7. It's a classic electric piano patch, and I'm using Native Instruments FM8 with the 'Soft E-Piano' preset to get something similar. I ran it through some compression to give the chords more sustain.

The lead synth is a Roland Juno-60, and is a similar patch to the one I recreated in my 'Chamber of Reflection' tutorial. The sound consists of a saw and sub oscillator (a 2nd oscillator tuned an octave down), a little LFO vibrato on the oscillators, the filter controlled by the envelope and the classic Juno chorus switched on. The envelope needs to be set with a long decay which makes it sound plucky, and a long release for the notes to slightly bleed into each other. Check the picture for the exact settings in TAL U-NO-LX. I used Soundtoys Decapitator on both tracks to drive and slightly darken the sound.

For The First Time

More dreamy sounding chords abound, there are two main synth parts in 'For The First Time': a vibrato'd lead smothered in delay and a much drier electric piano playing bass-y chords. To recreate the sounds I've started with the same plugins and patches as in 'On The Level', an electric piano in FM8 and a lead patch in TAL U-NO-LX. I then made some small adjustments to the lead sound; I switched on the square oscillator, raised the HPF and LPF filters, and increased the ENV release time. This made the sound a little thicker and a little brighter.

In the original track you can hear the notes being repeated through a delay and this delay being sustained in a ghostly way. This is a cool trick that adds sustain and can be done just by running a compressor after your delay. I'm using SoundToys EchoBoy for the Space Echo sound and PSP OldTimer for analog-style compression.

Watching Him Fade Away

The This Old Dog album closer, 'Watching Him Fade Away' is built around an especially muted synth track. Listen closely and you can hear a lot of filter movement triggered by an envelope, however it also seems a little irregular so the filter could also have some LFO modulation or could've just been manually adjusted while recording.

The basic sound is pretty simple so you can get away with using any polyphonic synth for this sound. I'm sticking with TAL U-NO-LX and using a patch with the Saw and Sub waves and a bit of LFO vibrato in the oscillator section for the same vibrato effect as in the leads above. For the patches filter movement I've pulled the cutoff most of the way down (not all of the way, I don't want the sound to mute) and raised the ENV control of the filter to halfway. Then I've programmed the envelope to have a short attack, long decay and a bit of sustain. This gives each chord some movement and makes it a really interesting part. Make sure to tweak the envelope settings and the envelope/filter amount to get the sound right in the sweet spot between muted and bright.

Another One

Again featuring the DX7/Juno-60 combination, 'Another One' has mysterious chords played on the DX7 while the Juno-60 supplies the vintage-sounding lead. I'm again using the FM8 preset 'Soft E-Piano' to get close to a classic DX7 electric piano sound, and for the lead I'm using TAL U-NO-LX. Turn the chorus off and raised the LFO modulation in the filter section to add some filter movement over a longer period of time. I've got the filter cutoff frequency a lot lower to get it sounding muted and I'm running it through EchoBoy and OldTimer.

]]>Mac DeMarco Synths Pt.2Mac DeMarco - Chamber of Reflection Synth TutorialSynthsreverbmachineWed, 03 May 2017 16:35:51 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/mac-demarco-chamber-of-reflection-synth597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e9329d44194808550b03f'Chamber of Reflection' really stands out on 'Salad Days' as the only song
with none of Mac's signature chorused-guitar playing, instead using layers
of dreamy sounding, swirling synths. Interestingly the hook of this song is
lifted from a 1975 Shigeo Sekito song called "The Word II". A lot of sites
and comments erroneously refer to Mac sampling this song, which is
incorrect as the original recording isn't used in 'Chamber of Reflection',
the ending of the melody is different. Instead the main theme has been
re-recorded with synths and a live rhythm section. Here's my recreation
that I'll talk you through

'Chamber of Reflection' really stands out on 'Salad Days' as the only song with none of Mac's signature chorused-guitar playing, instead using layers of dreamy sounding, swirling synths. Interestingly the hook of this song is lifted from a 1975 Shigeo Sekito song called "The Word II". A lot of sites and comments erroneously refer to Mac sampling this song, which is incorrect as the original recording isn't used in 'Chamber of Reflection', the ending of the melody is different. Instead the main theme has been re-recorded with synths and a live rhythm section. Here's my recreation that I'll talk you through:

This song's sound has two main elements; firstly I'll look at the synths and how to program them, then I'll look at Mac's distinctive use of tape for the vibrato effect, and how to get approximately close with plugins. To get a good idea of Mac's use of tape in his production, check out this short excerpt from 'Pepperoni Playboy' where he demonstrates how he uses a reel-to-reel tape machine to 'glue' his tracks together, and how he uses the tape machines pitch control.

Kids are always asking me "Mac, how do you do it? what's the trick?" It's all pitch control ya dumbasses, get yourself a tape machine and get your fucking head out of that Ableton shit ya moron. Come on, fucking retards.

Although this tutorial focuses on Ableton and plugins, if you like Mac's sound and want to pursue that sound in your own productions, consider buying a reel-to-reel tape machine like the Fostex A-8 in the video. Digital plugins have come a long way but if it's warmth you're after then nothing beats the sound of analog tape.

Lead Synth

There are 3 synth tracks that I can hear in 'Chamber of Reflection', the lead synth, the organ, and a buried melodic line that sits in with the organ. The lead synth is a Roland Juno-60 that uses all 3 oscillators and a decaying envelope to produce rich, trailing notes. I'll recreate it in TAL-U-NO-LX, a fantastic and cheap software emulation of the legendary Juno synths. Here's the melody with the default sound.

We want a really thick sound so switch on all 3 oscillators, take the sub oscillator down a little and raise the PWM of the square osc a little. Set the envelope with no sustain and raise both the delay and release so the notes trail off in good time.

We want to control the filter with the envelope, so take both filters down to halfway and raise the envelope on the filter to get the sound bright without sounding harsh. Add a bit of LFO vibrato to the patch, keep it nice and subtle as we'll be adding some layers of vibrato later, so keep the rate nice and slow, and raise the LFO in the Oscillator section only a little. Lastly turn on the signature Juno chorus effect to get it sounding really thick. Here's the final patch:

Organ

The organ sound in 'Chamber of Reflection' was a little harder to recreate, as I think it may have been a slowed down sound, recorded quite bright and then pitched down on tape. This means the original sound was probably a rich sounding organ patch that after being tuned down sounds darker. I don't have a tape machine so I'll try using aggressive overdrive and analog-style filters to recreate the dark, driven organ sound.

I'll start with a simple organ sound, I'm using Arturia B-3 V, however organ emulations are plentiful and any rich sounding organ patch will work. Here's what it sounds like:

Next I've used some aggressive EQing and filtering to get the organ to sound really mid-range-y and dark. I'm just using Live's built-in effects and in Auto-Filter I'm using the MS2 mode with the drive boosted a lot. Another great analog-style filter that you can push really hard is Arturia MiniFilter V.

Next I've added a really simple lead synth line that can be quietly heard next to the organ chords. I've used a simple one-oscillator Juno patch with a flat envelope and the chorus effect on, through a lot of reverb. Below you can hear this, then all 3 synths played together, and then the synths with a rhythm section backing I recorded with a Fender P-Bass and sampled drums.

Tape Effect

The next step is the tape / pitch effect; Mac will have run the recorded tracks through a reel-to-reel tape machine and used the pitch control to create a vibrato effect on the whole track. Although there are a lot of tape emulation plugins, many of them focus on tape-style saturation and don't offer a lot of control over pitch effects. Here are two plugins that do have type-style pitch control:

There are other options but they tend to focus more on tape saturation and don't have decent pitch control parameters. You can also use tape-style delay effects by turning the delay time and feedback to 0 and the mix to 100%. This only really works with specifically tape-style delay units, and again you want to find plugins that let you mess with the pitch control.

Firstly I'll try EchoBoy, which is my personal favourite; it's mainly a delay effect so it's important to turn off the echos first; set Mix to fully wet, then set Echo Time and Feedback to 0. I've raised the saturation and set the style to 'Cheap Tape'. Open the Style Edit menu and you can find the pitch settings, they're under 'Wobble'. I've set the shape to sine for a nice even vibrato, raised the depth and lowered the rate for a nice slow, deep vibrato. Here's what it sounds like.

Next up is Waves J37, an emulation of Abbey Road's Studer multitrack tape machine. It's got a subtle, clean sound but a pretty fiddly interface. I boosted the input gain a bit to get the track to start overdriving, then adjusted the pitch wobble with the 'Wow' settings at the bottom, again with a slow rate and deep depth.

Lastly is u-He Satin, which has tape emulation, delay and flanger modes, very versatile! To access the pitch controls you have to put it in delay mode and set Distance (as in tape distance) to 0. From there alter Mod Rate and Mod Amt to get a slow, deep vibrato. Make sure Tape mode at the top is set to vintage and push the input a little bit. From there experiment with the other settings to see how they affect your mix. Here's the results:

There's not a huge different between any of them, J37 stands out for me as being a little cleaner and bassier than the others, but EchoBoy has a great advantage in that there are plenty of other styles as well as 'Cheap Tape', with a variety of different tones.

]]>Mac DeMarco - Chamber of Reflection Synth TutorialTrashing Your Songs with Lo-Fi Guitar PedalsPedalsreverbmachineFri, 28 Apr 2017 23:09:00 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/trashing-your-songs-with-lo-fi-guitar-pedals597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e9322d44194808550afb6I'm a big fan of lo-fi music and I'm going to look at two guitar pedals
that I frequently run tracks through to get a dirty lo-fi sound: the ZVex
Instant Lo-Fi Junky and the Chase Bliss Warped Vinyl mkII. These pedals
emulate the noise, tone and wow & flutter of gramophone / vinyl record
players, which is a very low-fidelity sound, especially compared to
something like tape. I'll try them out on synth, guitar, bass and then the
whole mix.

I'm a big fan of lo-fi music and I'm going to look at two guitar pedals that I frequently run tracks through to get a dirty lo-fi sound: the ZVex Instant Lo-Fi Junky and the Chase Bliss Warped Vinyl mkII. These pedals emulate the noise, tone and wow & flutter of gramophone / vinyl record players, which is a very low-fidelity sound, especially compared to something like tape. I'll try them out on synth, guitar, bass and then the whole mix.

The Pedals

The ZVex Instant Lo-Fi Junky emulates the features of an earlier ZVex pedal, the Lo-Fi Loop Junky, alow-fidelity loop pedal with heavy compression, hiss, distortion and vinyl-like vibrato. The Lo-Fi Loop Junky has been used by Kevin Shields, Deftones, J Mascis and Godspeed! You Black Emperor. The Instant Lo-Fi Junky produces the same effect in real-time and can be used as a chorus effect too.

The Chase Bliss Warped Vinyl is a very powerful effect that features an all-analog signal path with digital control over parameters to get some really wacky, unique effects. There is a mkI and a mkII versions; the mkII features a tone knob, and a switch for less noise.

The Song

Here's a short song I quickly put together to try dirtying up with the pedals, there's just 4 tracks; a Juno-106, a Fender-P Bass, a Fender '51 electric guitar, and a drum machine. I've applied effects and reverb to each track and I'll run the lo-fi pedals after all these effects, so that the reverb/delay tails get affected too.

note - to get the most from the audio examples, use decent headphones / monitors!

ZVex Instant Lo-Fi Junky

Firstly, here are the individual tracks run through the ZVex Instant Lo-Fi Junky pedal.

Next I'll use the pedal to process the whole mix; you can really hear that the lo-fi pedal completely trashes the drums presence in the mix, and they become almost inaudible.

Chase Bliss Warped Vinyl mkII

Here are the exact same parts run through the Chase Bliss Warped Vinyl; I've used the warp function to make the LFO slightly uneven and raised the volume a little to very slightly overdrive the sound. Apart from that, the settings are mostly the same as how I set the Lo-Fi Junky, and for the most part it sounds very similar, however I'd say the Warped Vinyl sounds clearer, less compressed and less noisy than the Lo-Fi Junky.

You can hear in the final mix version that although the drums are heavily affected, they're not as inaudible as in the Lo-Fi Junky version. Make sure to A-B compare the two tracks to get a sense of each pedals character!

Stacking Both Pedals

Finally, here's the full mix being run through both guitar pedals together; I'm running the Warped Vinyl into the Lo-Fi Junky. I've also created an extra mix of the lo-fi instruments with clean drums.

You can hear that with both pedals engaged, the sound is being really smashed with compression from both units. The sound is darker and the vibrato effect is less predictable because of the two independent LFOs, creating a wobbly, almost seasick feeling.

Hopefully you enjoyed hearing what these two great pedals sound like, however I've barely even scratched the surface of what these pedals can do. Both can be pushed harder to get some really insane sounds, and they're both very versatile, offering varying amounts of chorus, compression and overdrive. Additionally the Warped Vinyl pedal has tons of extra modulation options, including a whole back panel of switches, saveable presets and the possibility of MIDI control.

If you enjoyed this piece then be sure to check back as I'll likely do another piece exploring some more creative uses of these pedals, as well as using delay pedals such as the Strymon El Capistan and the Chase Bliss Tonal Recall to emulate tape effects.

]]>Trashing Your Songs with Lo-Fi Guitar PedalsTame Impala Synths Pt.3SynthsreverbmachineThu, 27 Apr 2017 15:11:10 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/tame-impala-synths-pt-3597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e931ed44194808550af82Welcome back to more Tame Impala synths. In this part I'll mostly tackle
the synths sounds found on 'Lonerism'. I've already looked at 'Mind
Mischief' and 'Feels Like We Only Go Backwards' in previous parts, so if
you haven't already then check them out. I'll also look at the elusive
Roland JV-1080 that was used to create the track 'Gossip' off of the latest
album 'Currents'.
“And messing with sounds is easily my biggest hobby, so that makes it
pretty fun… not having to think artistically and just being the guy
with the hands on the knobs and switches.”
- Kevin Parker

Welcome back to more Tame Impala synths. In this part I'll mostly tackle the synths sounds found on 'Lonerism'. I've already looked at 'Mind Mischief' and 'Feels Like We Only Go Backwards' in previous parts, so if you haven't already then check them out. I'll also look at the elusive Roland JV-1080 that was used to create the track 'Gossip' off of the latest album 'Currents'.

“And messing with sounds is easily my biggest hobby, so that makes it pretty fun… not having to think artistically and just being the guy with the hands on the knobs and switches.”

Endors Toi

This song opens with a phased guitar, gliding lead synth and some wild sounding arpeggio runs I'll show you how create the latter two. The important elements of the lead sound involve using monophonic glide, unison detune and a wide open filter / envelope. Although I've seen some suggestions that this part was recorded with the Juno-106, I personally think it was actually recorded on the Sequential Pro-One, for it's better detune sound.

To set up the patch, use 2 sawtooth waves slightly detuned (or if your synth has it, use unison mode), set envelope sustain to max, put your synth in mono / legato mode and raise the glide parameter until the note slides sound at about the speed your hear in the track. Lower the filter cutoff just a little so to slightly darken the sound, otherwise it'll sound a little too harsh. I used Arturia Prophet V, which is based on a similar synth to the Pro-One, the Sequential Prophet-5. Here are my settings:

The arpeggio sound is a lot easier to create than it sounds, it has more to do with the arpeggio setting than it does the synth settings. This was no doubt recorded with Kevin's Sequential Pro-One, which has a very basic inbuilt arpeggiator function. Although the Pro-One can be synced via CV, in 'Endors Toi' it's running in free mode, so if you're trying to get a similar sound in a DAW make sure to turn off the Sync option on your arpeggiator and experiment with the Rate setting to get the speed you want. Here I found that 72ms sounds close to the original. I used Arturia Prophet V again, I set it to one of the basic template presets and used Ableton Live's Arpeggiator to arpeggiate the chords I played in.

Note that all Arpeggiator's function a little differently, especially when it comes to retriggering the arpeggio when you add and remove notes from the chord. In 'Endors Toi' there are a lot of notes that drop out and back in and Live's arpeggiator couldn't do this without restarting the pattern. Generally I find that synths with built-in arpeggiators work best.

Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control

Of course the longest song on Lonerism has the longest title, and it's full of some pretty wacky synth sounds. The Juno that opens up this song is similar to the one in 'Mind Mischief' that I wrote about in Part 2 of this series. The synth chords have a touch of vibrato created by the LFO, which gives it a seasick, out-of-tune feeling. We'll try running a Juno patch through a guitar amp emulation to make it sound a little dirtier.

The basic patch consists of a square-wave with a little pulse-width modulation and an envelope with no sustain and decay set high enough for the chord to trail out in time for the next chord. For the vibrato; the original Juno-106's LFO has only one wave shape, which is triangle, so set the LFO to triangle and raise the LFO-Oscillator setting to the point where the vibrato is noticeable but it's not overpowering. The sound is quite filtered so raise the HPF to about halfway and lower the LPF until the high notes just begin to get cut off.

For effects I used an amp simulator (just like in Mind Mischief), I used a Roland JC-120 emulation from Guitar Rig 5. Lastly I used Soundtoys EchoBoy for a subtle tape effect, and Decapitator and Valhalla VintageVerb for saturation and reverb.

Keep On Lying

The synth key patch that starts off 'Keep On Lying' is very similar to the one we just created, again we have a pulse-wave but this time the filters are opened up a little more. I don't think this synth track was run through an amp emulation and it sounds pretty close with the sound running from just the Juno. The chords are quite short so the envelope isn't too important here. You can use this patch as a starting point for a whole variety of other sounds by adding various effects to it.

The organ lead that comes in during the middle of the song is a pretty basic organ patch, I've used Arturia Farfisa V because it's my go-to, but any B3 or Vox emulation would also work great. I've used Soundtoys Decapitator to liven up the sound a lot, it's a great tool for make tracks sound more analog and for tone shaping; I've got the drive knob up to around 5 and the tone knob most of the way up to bright. If you don't have Decapitator then explore the distortion / saturation units in your DAW and remember that subtle often works best!

Gossip

Clocking in at less than a minute, 'Gossip' is a synth / guitar duet that serves as a prelude to 'The Less I Know The Better'. Featuring a pulsating, hypnotising synth line, Gossip is an instrumental track; maybe the lack of lyrics represent the triviality of gossip. The synths were recorded from a Roland JV-1080, a discontinued digital synth introduced in 1994. Roland's website claim it has been "Used on more recordings than any other module in history". They're widely available second-hand and sell pretty cheap on eBay.

'Gossip' is based on a JV-1080 patch called "Flying Waltz", which just needs two quick modifications to get the sound we want. Here's the sound directly from the box with no alterations:

To get it to sound closer to 'Gossip', a couple of adjustments are needed. The most important thing is that you have to speed it up to 118/119bpm, and then change the effect to "Quadruple-Tap-Delay". Here's what we get with that:

Sounds very close! I imagine 'Gossip' started with Kevin going through the patches on the JV-1080 and experimenting with different chords and settings until he stumbled across this.

Musically what's happening is that the patch is a sequence going from the note played and up a 5th. For example if you play E on a MIDI keyboard you'll hear back E and B. What's going on in 'Gossip' is that we have a chromatic descending sequence of E - Eb - D and a static F# note on top. These with the 5th's being added by the patch sequence create the following chords:

Thanks to Javier for the information, pictures and audio on this one!

Conclusion

If you've gotten this far then thanks for reading! This will probably be the last Tame Impala article I write but keep checking back as there's a couple of other similar pieces I've got planned. Have fun experimenting with your own synths and remember to constantly try new things and use these ideas as a starting point for your own sounds.

]]>Tame Impala Synths Pt.3Tycho - Awake Synth SoundSynthsreverbmachineMon, 17 Apr 2017 22:30:50 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/tycho-awake-synth-sound597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e931bd44194808550af47Tycho started out as something of a solo project for bandleader Scott
Hansen, and has since evolved into an ambient rock band whose signature
sound consists of swirling pads, dreamy synth leads, and muted electric
guitars, usually backed by live drums and bass guitar, all washed out with
a saturated wall of reverb.
I'm going to talk about the synth lead in the song Awake from the album of
the same name. Here's what we're going to end up with:

Tycho started out as something of a solo project for bandleader Scott Hansen, and has since evolved into an ambient rock band whose signature sound consists of swirling pads, dreamy synth leads, and muted electric guitars, usually backed by live drums and bass guitar, all washed out with a saturated wall of reverb.

I'm going to talk about the synth lead in the song Awake from the album of the same name. Here's what we're going to end up with:

The Tycho Sound

The most important thing about 'the Tycho sound' is the use of reverb and delay, the space created is big and modulated but never muddy, and elements never get lost in the space. This is in part due to the use of compression after the reverb/delay to raise the volume of the tails in relation to the original sound, and aggressive EQing to carefully control the tonal quality of the signal. There is an inclination towards analogue gear, or analogue-emulations, that have a natural tendency to impart desirable distortion and saturation into the signal chain.

Scott is incredibly open about his production methods, frequently answering questions and hosting reddit AMAs, he owns an envious collection of hardware synthesizers and effects unit, but also tends to mix things in-the-box with software plugins.

How do you go about melding traditional/organic instrumentation with electronic music without it sounding forced?

That's never been that difficult. I think it's because I use so many effects on everything. At the end of it, sometimes the guitars end up sounding indistinguishable from a synth. Once you put enough reverb, compression, and delay on things, you can start to get things into the same space, no matter where the original tone came from. Basically, I'm kind of applying the same ideas to all the sources, so at the end of it, it becomes cohesive.

Plugins

I've tried to stick as closely as possible to plugin's that Scott is known to use, however I've also tried to keep it as light as possible as Scott seems to use a lot of different plugins in his productions. Here's a list of the plugin's I'll be using in this article:

Tycho's sound has more to do with the effects and the order of those effects than it necessarily does with the synthesizer being used, if you don't have access to the above plugins then make sure the alternatives you use are a moog-emulation and the effects are analogue-style.

Awake Lead

For the lead synth in this song you'll need to program in a really simple single-oscillator triangle waveform patch and tweak the Filter and Filter Envelope so that the sound starts bright with a quick decay. This gives it a percussive quality that's going to really play well when run through delay. Come back to this step after you've added the reverb/delay because tweaking the Filter Decay has a massive effect on the way the synth reacts with the reverb/delay. Set the attack slightly higher than 0 so you don't get any clicking.

The next step is really important, we're going to use some very aggressive EQ to shape the sound, cutting the bass and high end frequencies and boosting the upper-mids. You can really get aggressive here, and again it's good to come back to this step after you've added the reverb-delay-compression to see how much of a difference this step makes in shaping the sound.

For reverb I'm using two instances of Valhalla VintageVerb as inserts. The first is a simple plate verb to make our base signal sound less dry, I've used the preset 'Fat Plate' as a starting point, dragged the Mix level down to 15% and tweaked it a tiny bit. The second is a long, lush modulated reverb that uses VintageVerbs 70s colour mode. I've used 'Large RHall' as a starting point, taken the mix down to 30% and cranked up the modulation amount and depth.

At this point we could stop, playing a synth into a big reverb usually works fine. It's sounding big and spacey, however it's not sounding tight like we want it to, so we're going to keep going.

Next up is the delay; note that delay after reverb is unusual and the other way around is the conventional way of ordering effects. Delay after reverb creates an even bigger sound as our big modulated reverb is now getting repeated by the delay effect. Some of Scott's favourite hardware delay units are the Roland Space Echo and the Electro-Harmonix Memory Man (the older big box versions). These are both dark-sounding wobbly delays, great for making a sound huge but not drowning out the original element.

I'm using Soundtoys EchoBoy which emulates several delay-boxes, including the two I just mentioned. I've used 'Memory Man' as a starting preset and set the echo time to 1/4th to get it to play well with the song. I've then raised the Feedback a little while lowering the Mix level, this has the effect of making the delay signal less prominent and more washy.

Now that we've added reverb and delay, we want to smash the signal with some heavy compression to raise the level of the reverb tails and sustain the sounds. I've used PSP oldTimer which has a nice gainy analogue sound, and set it as shown. The ratio is high and the compression is high, try get it to sound aggressive but not overly-squashed. Notice how the comp keeps the volume of the reverb/delay tails at a high volume, making the sound really sustain and dreamlike.

To finish off I'm once again EQing the signal, with similar settings before but more precise. This should be set on a track-by-track basis to let the synth sit well with the other tracks, here I found that boosting 1060Hz and using a low-pass filter above that get it sounding like the original.

Awake Lead 2

There is another synth lead in the song (about 0:44) that works in a similar way to the patch we just created, it is much higher in pitch and the synth sound itself is darker and a lot less percussive.

We can use the same effect settings as before and make just a couple of tweaks to our synth patch to get this sound. Firstly turn off keyboard tracking to make the sound less bright on the high notes. Next take the contour, or envelope amount right down and raise the cutoff a little, then on the filter envelope raise the decay and sustain to make the sound less percussive. Add in the same effects as above and you'll have a second lead patch to complement the first.

Try experimenting more with the synth settings to see if you can come up with more patches. Also try boosting different frequencies in the EQs you use, as well as trying out the different reverb types and delay styles to see if you can come up with your own sound.

]]>Tycho - Awake Synth SoundPond - Sweep Me Off My Feet SynthsSynthsreverbmachineSat, 15 Apr 2017 13:17:45 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/pond-sweep-me-off-my-feet-synths597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e9316d44194808550aedf'Sweep Me Off My Feet' by Australian psychedelic band Pond is a space-y
synthpop-esque song from upcoming album 'This Weather'. It features heavily
layered synths to underscore frontman Nick Allbrook's fantastic vocal
performance.
Synth Bass
The song starts with a thick sounding deep synth bass, I tried a couple of
synths and the Prophet was the one that got me closest to this bass sound.
The Moog was too dirty and the Juno was too clean but any Prophet-type
synth will really nail this sound. Set OSC B an octave below OSC A and set
the volume so that it's a little quieter and blends well with OSC A. Raise
cutoff and have all the sustain up to max for a big full sound, then turn
on legato and set the glide to roughly the right time (below it's set to
450ms).

'Sweep Me Off My Feet' by Australian psychedelic band Pond is a space-y synthpop-esque song from upcoming album 'This Weather'. It features heavily layered synths to underscore frontman Nick Allbrook's fantastic vocal performance.

Synth Bass

The song starts with a thick sounding deep synth bass, I tried a couple of synths and the Prophet was the one that got me closest to this bass sound. The Moog was too dirty and the Juno was too clean but any Prophet-type synth will really nail this sound. Set OSC B an octave below OSC A and set the volume so that it's a little quieter and blends well with OSC A. Raise cutoff and have all the sustain up to max for a big full sound, then turn on legato and set the glide to roughly the right time (below it's set to 450ms).

The Prophet synths have a really distinctive sound when used for bass, I've used Arturia Prophet V but for a free alternative check out TAL-Elek7ro, a great free software synth to learn on and great for bass sounds.

Vibrato Lead

The next most prominent synth sound in 'Sweep Me off My Feet' is the wobbly sounding synth line. The most important elements here are using both filters to get it sounding thin and not too-overpowering, and using the LFO to create a vibrato effect. I've used a Juno type synth because it has a Delay parameter on the LFO, so the vibrato doesn't come in immediately. Turn the glide on and set the glide time to halway.

Glockenspiel

Doubling the lead synth is a simple glockenspiel mallet sound. These are a great way to add childlike wonder to a track and are easy to recreate without mic'ing up a glockenspiel. I'm using the great (and free!) Boscomac Twinkle, a Reaktor ensemble that is easy to use and sounds great. There are also plenty of great sampled mallets which may sound more real and less synthesised such as the free Jonathans Glockenspiel and Cinesamples CineBells.

Fake Strings

There's a great classic String Machine synth in the mix too, it comes in at 00:57 and while most synth string patches will do, the one I found to sound closest is the ARP Omni, a classic string machine synth most famously used for the lead line of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'. I've used GForce Virtual String Machine with a patch that uses detuning for a really thick sound. For some free alternatives check out this list.

Synth Brass

Last up is a quiet synth-brass patch that's slightly buried in the mix but helps thicken out the sound. It comes in at the start and is easiest to hear at the end of the phrase. I used Arturia Prophet V again (any synth will do for this though) and took the filter cutoff right down to get it sounding nice and dull. Use the filter Env Amt and ADSR to shape the sound to where it's sound brass-y and you'll get a suitable patch.

Now you can listened to all the synths layered together, notice how each element compliments the others; some are big sounding and others are dull or light-sounding. They also cover all the frequencies from deep bass to high strings which is important when layering. I've also added some quick drums from Toontrack Superior Drummer so you can see how they all sound in a full-band context.

]]>Pond - Sweep Me Off My Feet SynthsEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Behind 'Phone Call'SoundtrackreverbmachineWed, 12 Apr 2017 02:58:01 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-behind-phone-call597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e9311d44194808550ae93Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind came out in 2004 and is now regarded
as one of the greatest films of the 2000s. A memorable aspect of the film
is Jon Brion's soundtrack that combines lush strings, lo-fi nylon string
guitars and melancholy piano.
Brion's work on the soundtrack led to him working with Kanye West on the
2005 album 'Late Registration', where he providing the strings and brass
arrangement, as well as co-producing and helping with the creative
direction of the album. Additionally the soundtrack has had a big influence
on indie and dream-pop bands as well as hip-hop artists, being directly
sampled in several songs:
Memoryhouse - Lately
Yuna - Someone Who Can
Jay Electronica - Eternal Sunshine
XXYYXX - Tied 2 U
Sol - Yours Truly

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind came out in 2004 and is now regarded as one of the greatest films of the 2000s. A memorable aspect of the film is Jon Brion's soundtrack that combines lush strings, lo-fi nylon string guitars and melancholy piano.

Brion's work on the soundtrack led to him working with Kanye West on the 2005 album 'Late Registration', where he providing the strings and brass arrangement, as well as co-producing and helping with the creative direction of the album. Additionally the soundtrack has had a big influence on indie and dream-pop bands as well as hip-hop artists, being directly sampled in several songs:

Phone Call

This is the main song I'm going to look at, it is constructed around a layered guitar part with lush strings playing over the top. We hear it at the end of this scene:

"There's a scene [in Eternal Sunshine] when Jim Carrey's character has just met [Kate Winslet's] Clementine, and she's invited him up for drinks, it was the first time you saw him excited, and you could tell it was going to be a pivotal point in his life. But the music you heard — do-do-do-do-do-do-do — didn't make you feel so good. It created such a good contrast. I just wanted to do something that felt like that."

The guitar part of 'Phone Call' features 2 layered tracks playing different arpeggiated chords over each other. This song is in the key of Db and Guitar 1 plays a Db arpeggio while Guitar 2 plays Gb to Ab arpeggios. This is how it is played:

We can program this to play back by MIDI and choose our own instrument sound, here I've chosen a pretty simple piano patch, I've also played the two parts on guitar into a loop pedal set to loop each part together. Both have been run through SoundToys Echoboy to add a basic lo-fi wobbly sound.

While these densely layered chord movements sound pretty gorgeous already, to really get the 'Eternal Sunshine' vibe we need to explore where the grainy lo-fi guitar sound on the record came from originally, so we need to look at a bunch of old keyboards.

The Optigan & the Chilton TalentMaker

Short for Optical Organ, the Optigan was released in 1971 and plays back prerecorded backing samples from optical discs made of clear plastic. A backing track could be produced by pressing the buttons on the left and melodies / improvisation could be played over this backing on the keyboard. Although sophisticated for it's time, the Optigan suffered from poor tonal quality due to limitations in the technology, and dust and dirt on the discs would create a crackly sound similar to worn phonograph records.

There were several instruments related to the Optigan, such as the Vako Orchestron and the Chilton TalentMaker. The latter was meant to improve on the sound quality of the Optigan and includes extra chord buttons that the Optigan had been missing.

The main optical discs that I'll be using are 'Classic Guitar' for the Optigan and 'Guitar in 4/4' for the TalentMaker. Note that I'm using samples of these discs. Here's where to get samples:

Optigan.com: An extensive selection of raw samples. Seem pricy but there's some really rare stuff, including the elusive TalentMaker samples.

IK Multimedia SampleTron: Avoid this, it's missing a lot of stuff and has a terrible interface.

"It's funny because you were talking about my grandfather inventing that keyboard, Jon has some old keyboards. My father, who is the son-in-law of my grandfather, took over his keyboard shop and he started to sell electronic synthesizers and organs and he had this very weird synthesizer called The Talentmaker. And I hadn't heard or seen one in 30 years. And when I went to see Jon he had this. So when you hear this very sad guitar that we use a lot [in the film] that's [The Talentmaker]. So you had the nostalgia of my grandfather's shop. So it was great to collaborate with him."

Phone Call (cont.)

Now I'll show how the TalentMaker and Optigan samples were used to create 'Phone Call', note that the song uses the TalentMaker samples but I'll also show how to use the Optigan samples from GForce M-Tron Pro too, as these are a little easier to get hold of. Firstly the TalentMaker 'Guitar in 4/4' samples:

For the the Optigan, the samples need to be sped up from their original tempo of 110bpm to 'Phone Call's tempo of 126bpm. Listen and notice that these samples are a lot bassier / muddier, and require a little bit of volume balance and EQ to sit right. Also to my ears the Optigan classic guitar samples sound a little like they're 'rushing' to my ears. Here are the Optigan 'Classic Guitar' samples:

Collecting Things

This song also features the same TalentMaker classical guitar loops as 'Phone Call', this time without the layering. The guitar follows a harmonically unusual Fm - E - Bbm - F - Fdim - Gm - Cm - F chord sequence.

Unfortunately I'm missing some of the TalentMaker samples for this one, so I've recreated it with Optigan samples. It sounds fine apart from the Fdim chord, which sounds a little weak here.

Bookstore

Bookstore features the exact same guitar part from 'Phone Call' but with an interesting reverse effect to make it same more surreal and dreamlike. Here's the song in the movie:

If we flip this song backwards we can hear how the guitar part is simply the 'Phone Call' guitar sped up and played in reverse:

This is a really easy effect to do, simply take your sample (or bounce a MIDI part to an audio file) then reverse the audio in your DAW. In Ableton Live simply use the 'Rev' button in the sample options. Logic Pro X users want to enable 'Advanced Audio Tools' and find Reverse in the Function menu of the audio editor.

Here's the 'Phone Call' TalentMaker sampler from earlier flipped backwards. I've also sped it up using Live's pitch-shifting algorithm that raises the pitch in relation to speed. I raised the tempo until the sample reached the pitch of E Major (3 semitones up from Db) which is the key the strings are playing in.

Spotless Mind

This is an interesting piece, it features the same guitar arpeggio theme found in the above songs but this time actually recorded on guitar rather than sampled from the TalentMaker. This is a complex, layered piece with up to 3 guitars at a time; I did attempt to transcribe it at once point but the layered nature of the piece makes it really difficult to work out exactly what each guitar is playing. Some of the guitar patterns are starting offbeat which gives it the swirling feeling.

Conclusion

I hope you've learnt something about the process behind these pieces, and maybe gained some insight into how Jon Brion created this soundtrack. He used sampling in a way not usually considered, and utilised old, obscure instruments in a new, fresh way. Try to incorporate these methods in your own compositions and see what you come up with!

]]>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Behind 'Phone Call'Tame Impala Synths Pt.2SynthsreverbmachineSat, 08 Apr 2017 16:35:34 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/tame-impala-synths-pt-2597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e930bd44194808550ae33Welcome back to another episode of Tame Impala Synth Sounds; Part 1 was
mainly about the Roland Juno-106 patches on 'Currents' and how to recreate
them using the original hardware or using software. In this article I'm
going to look at some of the different sounds used and how to recreate
them. As I go through I'll mention the original hardware, the software
alternative I use, and then the free software alternatives.
The Less I Know the Better
This song isn't actually as synth-heavy as it sounds, although it gets
wonderfully layered during the last chorus and outro. In the verses a lot
of the instrumentation is in fact a MIDI-pickup equipped guitar run through
a Roland GR-55, a guitar-specific synthesizer / effect unit. I don't own
one of these (yet...) so I'm not sure how these sounds were created, but
here's Kevin Parker explanation:

Welcome back to another episode of Tame Impala Synth Sounds; Part 1 was mainly about the Roland Juno-106 patches on 'Currents' and how to recreate them using the original hardware or using software. In this article I'm going to look at some of the different sounds used and how to recreate them. As I go through I'll mention the original hardware, the software alternative I use, and then any free software alternatives.

The Less I Know the Better

This song isn't actually as synth-heavy as it sounds, although it gets wonderfully layered during the last chorus and outro. In the verses a lot of the instrumentation is in fact a MIDI-pickup equipped guitar run through a Roland GR-55, a guitar-specific synthesizer / effect unit. I don't own one of these (yet...) so I'm not sure how these sounds were created, but here's Kevin Parker explanation:

"Could you point out specific instances of camouflaged guitars?"

"Well, for example, the instrumentation in the verses of 'The Less I Know the Better' is all guitar synth. There are organs, pads—even the bass is going through the guitar synth. Other than the drums and vocals, everything you hear there is guitar synth, and it has this sort of ’80s synth disco thing."

Also a little known fact is that the catchy bass-line is actually a guitar as well:

"The way that I know I’ve done a new riff that is cool, is if my hands don’t want to do it. If you let your hands do the thinking, it will just be the same old shit. But yeah, that bass riff – it’s actually a guitar with an octave pedal – but that very take is the one that’s used in the whole song."

However there are still some tasty sounds in this song that we can learn from. First up is the electric piano that fills out the chorus; a marked change from the 80's style Roland Juno peppered throughout the rest of the album. This is a Fender Rhodes electric piano, which is a great choice of instrument to fill out your own productions. I got really close using Lounge Lizard EP-4 by Applied Acoustics Systems.

I really prefer using this plugin over sampled Electric Pianos because I find I have much more control over the treble/bass balance, which in my opinion is the most important part of getting an Electric Piano to really sit in a mix. There are plenty of great free alternatives for Rhodes plugins, so many in fact that there's a list of the best ones here.

At the end of 'The Less I Know the Better' (2:37) we can hear some strings, this is a Mellotron, a really iconic string sound that Tame Impala use a lot live but very rarely in studio recordings. The Mellotron string sound is a staple of The Flaming Lips sound, who are a big influence on Tame Impala. Being built in the 60s, actual hardware Mellotron's are hard to come by and even harder to maintain, so it's almost certain that like The Flaming Lips, Kevin is using a software sampler of a Mellotron. Because the Mellotron is basically a sampler anyway (a sampler that used tape!) using a software sampler will get you very close to the sound of an actual Mellotron.

I'm using the Mk2 Violins and Cello patches in GForce M-Tron Pro which I think sounds really close, a free alternative for Windows is Artifake Labs RedTron_400 or Logic Pro X users have the built-in Vintage Mellotron patches.

Lastly we have the cheesy 80's synth line that punctuates the final chorus. This is a brass lead patch and I'm guessing it came from the Sequential Circuits Pro One. Here's a similar sound that I very quickly put together in Arturia Prophet V, an emulation of another Sequential Circuits synthesizer. The key to dialling a brass patch into your synth is to use the Filter Envelope with a medium attack, decay and sustain with a low cutoff and high ENV amount. Here's the final track with our lead line:

Yes I'm Changing

I previously looked at the airy pad that we hear throughout the song 'Yes I'm Changing'. This sound doesn't change too drastically throughout the tune and follows the same chords throughout. The song is full of other cool sounds that drive the song through it's narrative and keep it interesting and fresh throughout. At 0:45 this pad sound is joined by a cool keyboard sound that at firsts sounds like an electric piano, but listen close and you can tell it has a cold, metallic sound that can only be the product of FM synthesis.

This particular patch could've been originally created with a Yamaha DX7 or the Roland JV1080; I tried using Native Instruments FM8 to get the sound, and although it has a lot of great Electric Piano presets, I couldn't get any of them to sound quite as bright and sweet as those in the song so I ended up using the brilliant Korg Volca FM 'E Piano' patch to get an even closer sound. Listen to both the FM8 and Volca FM sounds below:

Some free alternatives are Ableton Live's built in Operator and Dexed.

Next up is the quasi-harpsichord synth sound heard at 4:30. I love Harpsichord-synth sounds (check out New Order - Elegia) and there's a couple of ways of going about programming them. Here's how I do it:

Use square pulse waves / square waves with high PWM

Have octave-up oscillators with lower volume

Amp envelope: 0 sustain and really short delay/release

Set a filter envelope slightly shorter than the amp envelope

You can pull this patch off with most synths but my go-to for these has always been a Moog because they're easy to program and sound great. Here's what I came up with in Arturia Mini V:

For extra authenticity add finger clicks and traffic jam noises over the top.

Beverly Laurel

I had a couple of people ask me about this one after the last Tame Impala article I wrote so here we go, the 'Beverly Laurel' synths. Something of an enigma as sonically it sits right between 'Lonerism' and 'Currents', 'Beverly Laurel' is written around some organ chords and a chilled-out sound lead synth line and there's a pumping effect applied that gives it a dancy sound.

The organ chords sounded to me like a Farfisa organ, which I found unusual as Tame Impala songs don't usually feature heavy organ use. I did try to use my Juno-106 but although I got quite close I couldn't get it to sound similar enough to convince me that it was a Juno used on the recording. I did get super close with Arturia Farfisa V though. I hear two different-organ sounds in 'Beverly Laurel', there's the one that comes in first which is higher pitched, low-pass filtered and has no vibrato, then 4 bars later it's followed by a lower pitched, fuller sounding organ with the 'All Boost' button and vibrato both on. Here's both of them:

The lead sound is really simple, it sounds so mellow because the waveform being used is a triangle waveform. This sound could've been recorded from Kevin's Moog Sub Phatty or his Sequential Circuits Pro One; I used Arturia Prophet V but any synth that has triangle oscillators will do. Listen to the lead on the song and you can hear a little bit of distortion and some nice analog echo, I used Soundtoys Decapitator and Echoboy with a SpaceEcho patch to recreate this. Here's what I came up with:

Lastly we have the growling bass sound that we hear at 2:37 in the song. This is indubitably the Moog Sub Phatty doing what it does best. The sound involves a fair bit of distortion and this can actually be created by overloading the Sub Phatty's Mixer section, moving the oscillators over the 12 o'clock mark makes them start to break up. On the Moog Sub 37 there's even an extra knob called 'Multidrive' to overdrive the sound even more. If you're using another synth then use an overdrive plugin for a similar effect. Here's the final product:

Mind Mischief

I'm gonna talk about the wonderful synth riff that we hear at 2:23 in the song, the one that sounds super trippy. This is a pretty coarse sounding patch that you won't really get straight from your synth's outputs. To my ears it sounds like a synth that's been processed with a guitar amp or guitar amp simulator, possibly the onboard guitar sim on Kevin's Boss BR-600 that you can hear all over 'InnerSpeaker'. A guitar amp sim can work to distort and break up and an otherwise pretty clean sound synth part. Here's my attempt at the Mind Mischief synth riff.

I'm running TAL U-NO-LX into Amplitube 4 into an Electro-Harmonix Small Stone. I've got a square wave with about 50% PWM and the chorus off in U-NO-LX, a Roland JC-120 sim in Amplitube with treble right down to remove any harshness and the chorus effect on, and the Small Stone was with low colour and a slow speed. I sweetened the sound up a bit using Soundtoys Decapitator to brighten up the sound, Echoboy for a tape emulation effect and Live's Glue Compressor to thicken the sound up a bit.

There are plenty of guitar amp simulators to choose from, including Guitar Rig 5 and Positive Grid BIAS. For Ableton Live Suite users there's the fantastic built-in Amp and Cabinet audio effects and for Logic Pro X users there's Amp Designer. Of course if you have own a guitar amp you can run your synths through that to dirty up the sound, it doesn't matter how small or cheap the amp is, experiment with the settings to see what works.

Conclusion

Some things to learn from this and apply to your own music:

Try running synth lines through guitar amps or amp simulators to dirty up the sound.

Don't be afraid to use a variety of sounds, and if you're working on an LP or EP don't rigidly use the same patches on every song.

Try layering multiple similar patches to get a more complex sounding patch.

Experiment using triangle waves to get mellow sounding lead synths.

I hope you learned something from the article. I already have a couple of ideas for Part 3 but I'll also take requests for which Tame Impala sounds to look at next time.

]]>Tame Impala Synths Pt.2How to Recreate Synth SoundsSynthsreverbmachineWed, 05 Apr 2017 17:12:59 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/how-to-recreate-synth-sounds597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e9304d44194808550adb8I'm going to write a few thoughts about recreating specific synth sounds
that your hear in songs and want to recreate yourself. If you only have
access to limited gear this can be great as a lot of tutorials you find on
the internet will focus on synths you might not have; also it's really good
to have one synth that you know well enough to recreate all your favourite
sounds on.
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and
you feed him for a lifetime." (Chinese Proverb)
1. Research
First things first, research the artist and try to identify which synths
they use. Look at studio pictures and see if you can identity synths as
Moogs, Rolands or Korgs. Read some interviews and see if they namedrop
their favourite bits of gear. Do they use analog hardware or do they work
on laptop-based setup that would more point to the use of soft synths? Look
at live videos and see what equipment they use to recreate their sounds. Do
they use effect pedals? Finding answers to these question can really help
take some of the guesswork out of recreating their sounds.I'm going to write a few thoughts about recreating specific synth sounds that your hear in songs and want to recreate yourself. If you only have access to limited gear this can be great as a lot of tutorials you find on the internet will focus on synths you might not have; also it's really good to have one synth that you know well enough to recreate all your favourite sounds on.

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." (Chinese Proverb)

1. Research

First things first, research the artist and try to identify which synths they use. Look at studio pictures and see if you can identity synths as Moogs, Rolands or Korgs. Read some interviews and see if they namedrop their favourite bits of gear. Do they use analog hardware or do they work on laptop-based setup that would more point to the use of soft synths? Look at live videos and see what equipment they use to recreate their sounds. Do they use effect pedals? Finding answers to these question can really help take some of the guesswork out of recreating their sounds.

2. Listen to the Whole Song

Oftentimes a synthesizer sound will change throughout a song and may reveal itself better in a certain part of the song. A great example is 'Everything In It's Right Place' by Radiohead, which is built around a synth part that sounds strongly like an electric piano, maybe a Wurlitzer or a Rhodes. However towards the end of the song the filter opens up and we can hear clearly that it's really a rich sounding polysynth that has it's filter right down at the beginning of the song. Doing some research you can read that they were using the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 heavily around the Kid A era. This could very well be that synth used in 'Everything In It's Right Place'.

3. Brightness vs Darkness

Listen to the below examples and try to work out where the filters are set. Listen for a high pass filter, a low pass filter, and resonance in these filters. If you don't know what these sound like then experiment with the filters on your own synths. Listening to the bass notes can be a giveaway for HPFs. Here are the examples:

Do this whenever you're listening to a synth part with the aim of recreating it, as this is a really important part of a synth sound.

4. Timbre

Next time you're jamming on a synth, be it hardware or software, try switching the oscillator waveforms between sawtooth, square, triangle and pulse and listen to the effect that this has on the timbre of the patch. Try listening to how each waveform sounds through a bright filter or a dark filter. Listen to the waveform through short and long envelopes. The more you can tell the difference between each waveform the more you'll be able to listen to a synth part on a record and immediately tell which waveform is being used.

5. Effects

Sometimes the sound is a really FX-heavy sound, and the actual synth settings have less to do with the sound then the effects. Learn to recognise chorus (such as the built in Roland Juno chorus), phasers and delay and these sounds will become easy to recreate. Often in these cases the specific synth used isn't particularly important but the type of effect is.

6. Persevere

Recognising and recreating synth sounds is a skill just like playing guitar solos or keeping a drum beat in time. The more you practice creating synth sounds the more your ears will develop and the more effortless it will become. You'll gain the skill of being able to hear sounds in your head and know how to translate them to a synthesizer, and you'll also be able to recreate the same sound on multiple synths and recognise the nuances of individual synthesizers.

I encourage every aspiring synthesist to work on developing this skill. Use the comments below to share what you're working on and any sounds you're struggling with and I'll gladly offer some help.

]]>Tame Impala Synth SoundsSynthsreverbmachineMon, 27 Mar 2017 19:16:26 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/tame-impala-synth-sounds597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e9303d44194808550ad9dTame Impala are a psychedelic band from Australia, their sound has mostly
consisted of guitar heavy 60s/70s-style rock, washed out with delay and
phasers. However their most recent album 'Currents' features heavy use of
synthesizers and electronic elements, continuing the electronic
experimentation found on 'Lonerism'. Although there is a huge variety of
interesting sounds on 'Currents', by far the most common are the lush
chorused sounds of the Roland Juno-106. The 106 was released in 1984 and
has a classic 80s sound, with an easy to program interface.
The key to the Juno sound is it's famous onboard stereo Chorus effect. A
great software emulation of the Roland Juno is the TAL-U-NO-LX. There is
also the free MZTK DCO-6 for Windows and u-he Diva which emulates the Juno
and many more.

Tame Impala are a psychedelic band from Australia, their sound has mostly consisted of guitar heavy 60s/70s-style rock, washed out with delay and phasers. However their most recent album 'Currents' features heavy use of synthesizers and electronic elements, continuing the electronic experimentation found on 'Lonerism'. Although there is a huge variety of interesting sounds on 'Currents', by far the most common are the lush chorused sounds of the Roland Juno-106. The 106 was released in 1984 and has a classic 80s sound, with an easy to program interface.

The key to the Juno sound is it's famous onboard stereo Chorus effect. A great software emulation of the Roland Juno is the TAL-U-NO-LX. There is also the free MZTK DCO-6 for Windows and u-he Diva which emulates the Juno and many more.

Some other synths used on 'Currents' include a Moog Sub Phatty and a Roland JV1080. For the Moog bass sound any Moog or emulation will get you close. The Roland JV1080 is a digital rack mounted unit that produces sound from onboard samples. This was likely the synth used to create 'Gossip', and you can hear some of the patches in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtlqSKfxaGo

"I fell in love with those naff '90s sounding keyboards. I've got a Roland JV1080 synth module that you can plug a midi keyboard into. An audiophile would think some of the patches are the cheapest, plasticky sounds. But for me they're so romantically nostalgic. Because they're sounds I remember from when I was growing up in the '90s. The sounds that remind of something I heard on the radio in the car."

Nangs

Who can't help fall in love with this synth sound? This trick behind this patch is using an LFO to trigger the filter cutoff, which gives it the wobble factor. A very similar patch can be heard in the intro of 'Be Above It'. Experiment with the LFO speed and the Modulation amount to get it sounding just right, the Juno-106 LFO can't be MIDI synced so some tiny adjustments might be necessary to get it to work with your track, however it doesn't matter if it's not perfect.

If you listen closely to the original you can clearly hear how the bass element of the sound is unaffected by the modulated filter, so you want to set the filter's cutoff frequency high enough to not affect your bass notes.

I used TAL-U-NO-LX through Soundtoys Decapitator and Glue Compressor to make it sound a little fatter and ValhallaVintageVerb to add some space. The only thing I automated was the filter cutoff, but I'm sure there's a lot more automation and mixing tricks going on in Nangs.

Eventually

The Juno-106 really makes this song for me, there's the patch that comes in during the breaks ("and I know I should be happier") and the patch that plays the melody during the outro. The former patch is a really simple square wave through classic Juno chorus, with a little LFO on the filter that comes in after a high delay time.

The trick to getting this to sound really nice is to use the range function. This changes the octave the keyboard plays but the Keyboard parameter on the filter stays the same, meaning you can move the range down to 16' and play an octave higher up the keyboard to get a richer, brighter sound.

Yes I'm Changing

This is a pretty simple patch, similar to the one on 'Eventually' but with less low-end and more reverb / delay, giving it a dreamier sound. There is some rhythmic movement in the track which sounds like it was created with sidechain compression to duck the sound in time with the drums. I used Glue Compressor in Live triggered by a kick drum routed to Sends Only. Every DAW will have it's own way of doing sidechain compression.

The important part of this airy pad sound is not to overdo the bass elements of the patch, keep the sub mix low and raise the HPF to lower the volume of the lower notes. Here's my settings, and I used Soundtoys Echoboy and ValhallaVintageVerb for effects.

Feels Like We Only Go Backwards

The synth patch in this song is a Juno-106 set to sound similar to a transistor organ, and run through a phaser which is most likely the Electro-Harmonix Small Stone Phaser that Kevin Parker frequently uses for guitar.

For the synth sound I'm using Saw and Square with a little Sub, I've got the LPF all the way up and the HPF about half-way up to take some weight off the bass notes. For the phaser sound I'm using the Small Phazer effect in Amplitube 4 with the colour on high and the rate just above 9'clock. Remember to run Amplitube in stereo and turn off all the amp and cabinet sections so you just get the pedal effect.

Some other Small Stone software emulations are the Stoned Phaser in Guitar Rig 5, Big Rock by ArtsAcoustic and Soundtoys PhaseMistress 'Classic 7' style gets pretty close to the Small Stone sound. EHX Small Stones can be picked up pretty cheap on eBay and are definitely worth the investment, the pedal has a lot more noise and charm than the software versions.

Past Life

The main synth used in Past Life is... you guessed it, the Roland Juno-106. This is a simple patch that makes use of the PWM function on the square wave, and the trick to these sounds is finding the sweet spot for the PWM amount. For me that meant pushing it pretty high but not too high that the square wave gets lost behind the saw wave. Turn off the sub oscillator and use the envelope with a long decay on the filter.

After the first chorus this Juno synth line is doubled by what sounds like a DX7 patch and some classic Tame Impala phasing. I got reasonably close with the Native Instruments FM8 preset Electric Harp and used Soundtoys PhaseMistress on a group containing all the synths.

New Person, Same Old Mistakes

The bass synth that forms that backbone of this song was most likely the Moog Sub Phatty, which has the classic Moog bass sound. I used my Moog Sub 37 and got the patch sounding right pretty easily; the important things are to set the filter envelope to trigger on every note, and get the envelope amount and ADSR settings right to how you want it to sound. I set the oscillators so that OSC1 and the SUB oscillator would be on 16' and a lower volume OSC2 set to 8' adding a little brightness. Here are the settings I used:

For the harpsichord-esque line that comes in during the intro I again used the Juno-106 and programmed a similar patch to the earlier one from 'Past Life', this time with only the square wave with a much shorter decay time and the PWM knob maxed out. I ran the 106 through Decapitator to brighten up the sound and ValhallaVintageVerb to add some space.

Download & Conclusion

“The first one I got was a Sequential Circuits Pro One. There’s a lot of that on the album,” said Parker. “I fell in love with it from the first moment I pressed down a key, and it pretty much kicked off my love of synths. Then I got a Roland Juno 106 and one of those Radioshack synths. I just love the way they have this completely different origin of sound to something like a guitar. After all the effects and everything they can both end up in the same place, but the way the sound is produced makes you think a bit differently about how you’re going to play these chords, this melody, or whatever. They have this laser beam kind of sound that makes me want to cry every time I hear a chord played.”

For the TAL U-NO-LX patches you can download them here. There are also 2 patches for 'Eventually' even though the example above I used my Juno-106. Have fun with these patches and I encourage you to play around with them and come up with your own sounds.

That's about all for this article, as you can see the sounds are all pretty basic but as long as you know your gear and are willing to be patient in finding the sweet spot for certain settings you can get some really great sounds. Keep experimenting and if there's enough interest I may do a part 2 in the future!

]]>Tame Impala Synth SoundsAbleton Live Workflow TipsUncategorizedreverbmachineFri, 17 Mar 2017 19:46:25 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/ableton-live-workflow-tips597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e92fbd44194808550ad24I've been using Ableton Live for coming up to 10 years now, at first while
I was still experimenting with it I was pretty disorganised with my
projects, but since learning more about the program and using it for more
serious projects I've come up with a couple of ways to organise my tracks
and speed up my workflow.
1. File Names by Date
When you´re working on a track it'll typically go through several different
versions or stages of completion. Sometimes these changes will consist of
small tweaks but other times you'll be making big sweeping changes that
take the track in a new direction. You may reach a point where you want to
go back to a previous state of the track because something worked better
before an edit, or you may want to compare changes to a mix.

I've been using Ableton Live for coming up to 10 years now, at first while I was still experimenting with it I was pretty disorganised with my projects, but since learning more about the program and using it for more serious projects I've come up with a couple of ways to organise my tracks and speed up my workflow.

1. File Names by Date

When you´re working on a track it'll typically go through several different versions or stages of completion. Sometimes these changes will consist of small tweaks but other times you'll be making big sweeping changes that take the track in a new direction. You may reach a point where you want to go back to a previous state of the track because something worked better before an edit, or you may want to compare changes to a mix.

To deal with this I create a new project file within the project folder every time I make a big edit to my song. To keep these organised I start every new file name with the current date, formatted like 160120, for 20th January 2016. You just have to get into the habit of going File, Save As...at the start of every session. Here's what one of my projects typically looks like. You can see all the versions get automatically ordered from oldest to newest:

2. Patches

Another thing that´s really helped my workflow in Ableton is using Instrument Racks to save my favourite instrument / effect combinations for use in future projects. However rather than store them in Ableton's Instrument Rack folder, I keep them in my own folder that I've created and have more control over. I can group all my sounds by categories, instrument type or genres. Some of them are simple instrument presets, some of them are complex effects chains and some of them are unique sounds I've designed myself using a mixture of different plugins. I like to quickly throw a couple of the most important parameters (cutoff / mix / drive etc) into the macros so that when I'm working on music I can edit the sound without having to delve into the plugins interfaces.

3. Preset Returns

Live allows you to store some of your favourite project settings to be used as defaults for all future projects, simply by using Preferences > File/Folder > Save Current Set as Default.

One way this can be used is to set up your favourite Reverb and Delay plugins on the default Return Tracks. You can even create more return tracks to give yourself more choice over Reverb and Delay sounds. For example, in my default live set I have 6 return tracks:

Big Reverb

Small Reverb

Drum Plate Reverb

Huge Cathedral Reverb through EQ settings.

Delay 1 (brighter)

Delay 2 (darker)

This is useful as I can quickly get all the basic sounds out of my return channels. Once I've been working on a track for a while I'll start to tweak the settings on each return channel to make the spaces better fit the individual track.

]]>Ableton Live Workflow TipsDisasterpeace Fez SynthsUncategorizedreverbmachineFri, 11 Nov 2016 14:58:11 +0000https://www.reverbmachine.com/blog/disasterpeace-fez-synths597e901944024389182c4ce3:597e92f9d44194808550acb2:597e92fad44194808550ad1aI've been listening a lot to Disasterpeace's wonderful Fez soundtrack
lately; I decided to find out how he created his sounds and was surprised
to see he creates them mostly in Native Instrument's Massive, a synth I
have but haven't played with in years. I did some experimenting and managed
to come up with the patch for the song 'Compass'. A more filtered version
of the sound appears in 'Beacon'. For extra authenticity add a bit-crusher
(8 bit) and some slow pitch modulation.
Download Link
Enjoy!

I've been listening a lot to Disasterpeace's wonderful Fez soundtrack lately; I decided to find out how he created his sounds and was surprised to see he creates them mostly in Native Instrument's Massive, a synth I have but haven't played with in years. I did some experimenting and managed to come up with the patch for the song 'Compass'. A more filtered version of the sound appears in 'Beacon'.
For extra authenticity add a bit-crusher (8 bit) and some slow pitch modulation.